If there is anyone who knows music, it’s Joe Boyd. With a career spanning 60-plus years, Boyd is an indisputable legend; he’s has been there and seen it all. Getting his start as a Harvard grad tour managing Muddy Waters, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Sonny Rollins, and Stan Getz, among others, Boyd went on to organize folk and jazz fests, eventually opening the epitome of London’s psychedelic scene — the UFO club — while working at the Elektra Records UK office.
Fast forward to 1979, when Boyd opened his own label, Hannibal Records, welcoming the likes of Nick Drake, R.E.M., Toots and the Maytals, Richard Thompson, Pink Floyd, and beyond to the studio, becoming the mastermind behind many of the big hits we all know and love today. Although heavily molding music in the main markets, Boyd never lost focus on bringing more world music to the ears of Western audiences.
His resume alone is enough to write a brilliant book on the industry… Which he did.
Collecting his early career experiences into a 2007 memoir entitled White Bicycles: Making Music In The 1960s, Boyd has already topped the bestseller list with loads of critical acclaim. Sir Elton John himself has publicly accredited the book as his favorite on music of all time! The 1960s was a pivotal time for music; the decade housed the collision of American jazz, southern blues, Elvis-style rock-and-roll (aka, more blues, only done by white people), and folk with the budding British folk and rock scene. What a time!
But how did this cultural music amalgamation come into play, exactly? Boyd has searched for the answer ever since White Bicycles hit the shelves, digging through historical records and deriving the source of several oral histories in order to pinpoint the genesis of each and every modern musical influence. And, again, he just so happened to do so.
After 15 years of extensive research, Joe Boyd is set to release his findings, And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music via ZE Books, on September 24th. Loaded with sociopolitical commentary (and a fair amount of jabs at white people), Boyd analyzes the genealogy of global sound. The journey starts in South Africa with the evolution of Mbube, traveling westward to the son on the street-corners of Cuba, before hopping islands to Jamaica to talk about the Catch A Fire movement, and on and on and on.
But none of these accounts are that simple.
Mbube (and other styles of ngom’ebusuku, or “night music”) came into being as a resistance against apartheid, with music weaving in and out of the country’s historical fabric: through the division of tribes, the introduction of alcohol, the relocation into ghettos, the creation of the ANC political party, the jailing (and eventual release) of Nelson Mandela… all of it laddered up to the eventual flack Paul Simon got for his Graceland when he found it fitting to introduce the western world to (and profit off of) mbaqanga grooves. But what an introduction it was by Simon, bringing African rhythms to the forefront of 80s radiowaves. Despite Simon’s success, the key players racketing up to his release are mostly are lost in time, with few recordings in existence, let alone receiving royalties today.
And the pattern of pop music emerging from persecution continues in Boyd’s account of Cuba, or, as he put it: the reconnecting of North America’s musical culture to African rhythms “through the back door opened by the jokers in this deck of musical cards — the French.” Haitian slaves were a dime a dozen when the tobacco plants went up, with more being shipped in from Africa every day. Without getting too into the details (read the book!!), this is yet another story where the whites felt threatened by people of color with rhythms beyond their capacities and styles outside of what they deemed socially “proper”.
Although a whopping 744 pages of global atrocities aired for the sake of musical antiquity, Boyd phrases his findings in such a whimsical way that it comes off as entertaining, even if your ancestors were the merciless, megalomaniac white ones. Boyd’s new book ascertains not only the epicenters of rhythms, but goes steps further in spelling out the colloquialisms and foreign terms necessary to understand each in context. It’s a testament to the fallen soldiers who paved the way for New Orleans jazz, New York hip hop, the Fab Four of Liverpool, and numerous other off-shoots of today’s music.
It’s a transparent look musical history, shaped equally by oppressors and oppressed.
With the release on the way, Boyd is in the midst of a national book tour wrapping up in Austin on October 8th. David Byrne (of Talking Heads) even showed his support by teaming with Boyd in New York City this week! For more information to get your copy in-person, see details below, and make sure to pre-order your copy of And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain: A Journey Through Global Music today.
Remaining US book tour:
- September 16 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk Music
- September 19 – Murfreesboro, TN – University of Middle Tennessee | Not open to the public
- September 20 – Nashville, TN – Americanafest (in conversation with Buddy Miller)
- September 22 – Tulsa, OK – Bob Dylan Center
- September 24 – Santa Fe, NM – Collected Works
- September 25 – Albuquerque, NM – Bookworks
- September 30 – San Francisco, CA – Book Passage, Corte Madera Store (in conversation with Jerry Harrison)
- September 30 – Berkeley, CA – Mrs. Dalloway’s
- October 3 – Los Angeles, CA – Book Soup
- October 6 – Houston, TX – Contemporary Arts Museum
- October 8 – San Marcos, TX – Center for Texas Music History, Texas State University (in conversation with Joe Nick Patoski)
- October 8 – Austin, TX – Waterloo Records
‘And The Roots Of Rhythm Remain’ playlist:
Cover photo by Andrea Goertler
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